Likely scenario is they didn't have any other software running on the mainframe, so instead of turning it into a giant space heater, they thought they'd keep the sucker plugged in to run e-mail.
First, like everyone's already said, call a lawyer that specializes in IP law (Wilson Sonsini, Cooley Godward, etc).
Second, if you don't have your beta testers under an eval agreement, draft one and insist they sign it immediately. If they don't sign it, pull them from the beta test asap.
My company had a similar problem. The most frightening part is the claimant has several years before they have to take you to court for whatever money they feel they deserve. So this company can sit back and wait to see if your company is a success. If you make it big in three years, they'll resurface and claim you owe it all to them.
Do whatever you can to force the issue with this company sooner rather than later. If you don't get them to sign something that says they don't owe you a thing, this will hang over your company as you will have to disclose it to prospective investors, acquirers or underwriters.
You absolutely do not want to have a non-disclosure agreement, at least not one that resembles a traditional one.
An NDA says "You don't take any of my IP, I don't take any of yours." Well, the whole point is they're arguing that you're using their IP. In other words, an NDA reinforces their claim.
How about offer consumers a bargain? As much as we complain about M$FT and their proprietary OS, Apple is a far greater offender. Everything they sell is proprietary and consequently expensive and quickly outdated.
The hypocritical argument most folks (including Apple) make for the iMacs is "very few 'average' consumers need a P4 2ghz PC that's klunky and difficult to use, so the every man needs to buy an intuitive iMac."
Apple is like a mid 1980's Jaguar. It looks really cool, but it's not that fast, you pay a lot more for it than you should, and you can't rely on it for more than a year or two.
The only folks who seem to be avid supporters of the iMac is people who read Slashdot who are about as far away from the "everyman" that needs an intuitive PC as you can get.
If Jobs came out and said "I've got this really cool looking product that graphic designers and people who scan the BeOS boards want," I doubt the iMac would be on the cover of Time.
I'd love to have an alternative to Intel, but I have not heard many good things about the Transmeta products. Their performance was never as good as was initially promised, many early chips had serious flaws that required a recall and the power consumption benefits are not that great now that Intel has produced better low power chips. I know at least one laptop manufacturer (I think Toshiba) who announced they were going to use Crusoe, but has since shelved the idea because of the aforementioned quality and performace issues. I'm afraid they're destined to be a novelty item.
This is a completely bogus argument, the distinction does not exist.
Every product I can think of has some element of the economics of software. Music, movies, etc are obvious corrolaries, but you don't think the car you bought has operates under the same model? Almost half of what you pay for a car has NOTHING to do with production cost. Software development, R&D, design, focus groups, consulting services; you're paying for all of these things when you buy that car, and NONE of them scale linearly with production. Should that be free too? Do you think GM owes you 50% off for the part of the car that's not derived from manual labor or raw steel?
I agree with the other replies to this post, applications have always found a way to utilize new computing power. I can think of a number of applications that would slow your described system to a halt.
What I'd be curious to know from the developers out there is whether application development is the real bottleneck. I can imagine a day not too far away when my PC is capable of rendering real-time photo realistic 3D images, but someone's got to develop the software to do that. Seems like a LOT of very tedious work to assemble ultra high-rez textures, 20x as many polygons, etc.
I know new engines and dev environments offer some abstraction to accelerate this process, but are THOSE advances moving as fast as the hardware ones? Somehow I don't think Moore's law applies to software development productivity.
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Likely scenario is they didn't have any other software running on the mainframe, so instead of turning it into a giant space heater, they thought they'd keep the sucker plugged in to run e-mail.
First, like everyone's already said, call a lawyer that specializes in IP law (Wilson Sonsini, Cooley Godward, etc). Second, if you don't have your beta testers under an eval agreement, draft one and insist they sign it immediately. If they don't sign it, pull them from the beta test asap. My company had a similar problem. The most frightening part is the claimant has several years before they have to take you to court for whatever money they feel they deserve. So this company can sit back and wait to see if your company is a success. If you make it big in three years, they'll resurface and claim you owe it all to them. Do whatever you can to force the issue with this company sooner rather than later. If you don't get them to sign something that says they don't owe you a thing, this will hang over your company as you will have to disclose it to prospective investors, acquirers or underwriters.
You absolutely do not want to have a non-disclosure agreement, at least not one that resembles a traditional one.
An NDA says "You don't take any of my IP, I don't take any of yours." Well, the whole point is they're arguing that you're using their IP. In other words, an NDA reinforces their claim.
Maybe that's true as far as installed base, but not new sales. Compaq sold more iPaqs than all Palm OS PDA's combined in 2001.
If you're on a Palm OS, admit you're a glorified Franklin Planner (actually my preference) but price accordingly.
How about offer consumers a bargain? As much as we complain about M$FT and their proprietary OS, Apple is a far greater offender. Everything they sell is proprietary and consequently expensive and quickly outdated.
The hypocritical argument most folks (including Apple) make for the iMacs is "very few 'average' consumers need a P4 2ghz PC that's klunky and difficult to use, so the every man needs to buy an intuitive iMac."
Apple is like a mid 1980's Jaguar. It looks really cool, but it's not that fast, you pay a lot more for it than you should, and you can't rely on it for more than a year or two.
The only folks who seem to be avid supporters of the iMac is people who read Slashdot who are about as far away from the "everyman" that needs an intuitive PC as you can get.
If Jobs came out and said "I've got this really cool looking product that graphic designers and people who scan the BeOS boards want," I doubt the iMac would be on the cover of Time.
I'd love to have an alternative to Intel, but I have not heard many good things about the Transmeta products. Their performance was never as good as was initially promised, many early chips had serious flaws that required a recall and the power consumption benefits are not that great now that Intel has produced better low power chips. I know at least one laptop manufacturer (I think Toshiba) who announced they were going to use Crusoe, but has since shelved the idea because of the aforementioned quality and performace issues. I'm afraid they're destined to be a novelty item.
This is a completely bogus argument, the distinction does not exist.
Every product I can think of has some element of the economics of software. Music, movies, etc are obvious corrolaries, but you don't think the car you bought has operates under the same model? Almost half of what you pay for a car has NOTHING to do with production cost. Software development, R&D, design, focus groups, consulting services; you're paying for all of these things when you buy that car, and NONE of them scale linearly with production. Should that be free too? Do you think GM owes you 50% off for the part of the car that's not derived from manual labor or raw steel?
I agree with the other replies to this post, applications have always found a way to utilize new computing power. I can think of a number of applications that would slow your described system to a halt. What I'd be curious to know from the developers out there is whether application development is the real bottleneck. I can imagine a day not too far away when my PC is capable of rendering real-time photo realistic 3D images, but someone's got to develop the software to do that. Seems like a LOT of very tedious work to assemble ultra high-rez textures, 20x as many polygons, etc. I know new engines and dev environments offer some abstraction to accelerate this process, but are THOSE advances moving as fast as the hardware ones? Somehow I don't think Moore's law applies to software development productivity.